Megan Singleton: BloggerAtLarge.com writer on utilising Facebook groups while travelling

Destination Facebook groups are a useful tool to utilise while travelling - and they can help you be better prepared in the face of disaster.

Between natural disasters, adverse weather conditions or mosquito outbreaks, online communities can be useful to get perspective from the locals to prepare for all kinds of scenarios.

BloggerAtLarge writer Megan Singleton explained further - read more about it here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News talks'b Travel with Windy Woo Tours Where the
World is Yours for now.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Joining us now is Megan Singleton, blogger at large dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Good morning, Good morning Francesca, and you've got.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Some tips for us if we're planning our travel online.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Yeah, exactly. So we've touched on this before. I use
Facebook groups when I'm going somewhere and I want to
find out things to do. Maybe I jump on these
new groups. I've joined them, and I see what people
are saying about, you know, where to go for a
nice birthday dinner or things like that. But today I
wanted to talk about another way to use them, and

(00:48):
that is for up to date, real time news. So,
for example, there's been lots of flooding in Bali last week,
and so if you were off to Bali, you might
be thinking, oh my goodness, what's semanac, Like, you know,
we supposed to be going there tomorrow. So this is
exactly what I did. I use this as an example.
I jumped on, I found some Bali Facebook groups, I

(01:09):
joined them, I started scrolling through. You don't need to
ask your own questions. You can just scroll through. Sure enough,
I've found out locals are there right now saying Nope,
Semoniac's all good, Leggyan was really flooded, but that will
have subsided in a couple of days. So I just
thought that's a really handy tip for people, because it's
hard sometimes to find on the ground and foe just

(01:31):
when you're about to go somewhere, if you hear like
the Hawaii Big Island volcano that's going off right now,
or the mosquitoes really bad in Fiji right now. So
these are all the things you can use Facebook groups for.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
But the other thing too, Megan, is if you do
just want to double check, you can ask that question
and go look, just wanting to know, you know, right now,
what's the situational what's that situation?

Speaker 3 (01:54):
And people are really generous, And I jump in with
comments where people ask things that I know the answer
to as well. People are really generous with their time.
And you were just talking about algorithms. I use also
the algorithms in my favor I know that they try
to manipulate me, so I manipulate it back. So let's
say I want to find a green sundress to take
with me somewhere. I will type that in on Facebook

(02:16):
and I'll find some shops selling green sundresses. I'll have
a bit of a look. Then before you know it,
my whole feed is filled with new shops I've never
heard of selling sundresses. So you can use it as well.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Oh that's really interesting kind of approach there. I hadn't
really thought about. Well, yeah, I mean I suppose I
just google it. Is it the same as googling green?

Speaker 3 (02:38):
No, well, gurgling you'll get the shops you might have
heard of. But I just find on Facebook there's businesses
I've never heard of, Like, for example, I need to
buy a bottle of port as a gift for somebody.
So I just used it now and there. Who knew
there were all these kinds that they've already just come
up this morning for me to now go and find.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
I love it down another rabbit hole. Excellent tip. Thank
you very much, Meghan. Appreciate that. You can find more
from Megan at blogger at large dot com.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
For more from a Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news Talks at b from nine am Sunday
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio